The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has ordered the Metro-North Railroad to pay $30,000 in punitive damages to a worker and $13,510 in attorney’s fees, after determining that the railroad took retaliatory action against an employee at its Harmon Diesel Shop in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. They will also be required to expunge any references to disciplinary actions and counseling sessions related to the worker and his injury.

The unidentified worker, a machinist, injured his finger on July 6, 2009 and reported it to management. The worker then went to the hospital, and was instructed by the doctors who treated the injury not to work that day or the next. However, the railroad’s occupational health service overruled the doctors’ orders, and determined he was qualified for restricted duty. He was then ordered to serve as fire watch while a fuel tank was being welded inside a locomotive; a duty normally carried out by a qualified member of the fire brigade.

When the worker raised concerns that he was neither qualified nor medically fit to perform fire watch duty, he was threatened with suspension. He was later excused from work for more than a week by his personal doctor, but after he returned to full duty, no work was assigned to him and he was issued a written reprimand in which the railroad claimed that he caused his injury.

One reason the fine was so high is because this was the second time in a month that Metro-North has been cited for retaliation. On March 8, OSHA found the railroad had retaliated against another employee at the same shop who reported an injury, interfered with his medical treatment and forced him to work in violation of his doctor’s orders. In that case, OSHA fined the railroad $10,000 in punitive damages and $8,830 in attorney’s fees

Metro-North has 30 days from receipt of the findings to file an appeal with the Labor Department’s Office of Administrative Law Judges.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour has fined Quebec-based 4536631 Canada Inc., owner of a Rona Cashway Building Centre in North Bay $65,000 for a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act after an accident in which a worker was injured.

The incident that led to the fine occurred on August 12, 2010, as workers were using a forklift to help them organize materials as they were cleaning a drywall warehouse at the building centre.  A young worker on the team mistakenly assumed that eye contact had been made with a forklift operator as he approached and walked behind it. As he did so, the operator reversed the forklift towards the young worker at a high speed and did not see him in time to avoid running over the young worker, The resulting collision resulted in bone fractures and nerve damage.

An investigation by the Ministry of Labour found that there were no adequate warning signs or barriers in place to protect workers where the forklift was being used.

4536631 Canada Inc. pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that barriers, warning signs or other safeguards were in place to protect workers in an area where vehicular traffic may endanger a worker.  The fine was imposed by Justice of the Peace Diane Lafleur, who also imposed a 25% victim fine surcharge, as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.

According to a new report published last week in the journal Public Health Reports, researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health found that, because of inadequately regulated work environments in the U.S. and Canada, 88 youth under the age of 20 die from work-related injuries  each year, while 20,000 young workers miss work in private industry every year due to occupational- related illness or injury.

The study’s lead author was Carol Runyan, Ph.D., MPH, and professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. When the report was released, she commented that, “We don’t tend to think of child labor as a major issue in the U.S., but we should. Laws governing the employment of youth ages 14 to 17 in this country are often very lenient and in the case of family farms virtually non-existent.”

Runyan, along with colleagues John Lewko, PhD, of Laurentian University in Ontario, and Kimberly Rauscher, ScD, of West Virginia University, are brandishing the report as they advocate for stronger governmental monitoring of young worker safety, and encourage more research into preventing workplace injuries among teenagers.

“Work can help young people develop skills, explore career options, earn money and gain self-esteem,” Runyan said. “But without adequate safeguards in place, work can also be dangerous for youth.”

Young people are no small faction in U.S. and Canadian labor forces. As of 2010, more than 17.6 million workers under age 25 are employed in the U.S., while three million workers between the ages of 15 and 24 were employed in Canada.

The study notes that young workers face a number of risks on the job, including being burned working near fire and hot grill tops, being cut by sharp tools and automatic slicers, falling or being  hit by heavy equipment at construction sites, or even being robbed and possibly shot, in some cases.

Runyan began her research when she served as director of the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center. She now directs the University of Colorado’s Pediatric Injury Prevention, Education and Research Program.

“We need to make sure that the jobs our kids take are safe,” Runyan said. “But ultimately it’s not the responsibility of 15-year-olds to ensure their safety –it’s the responsibility of employers.”

One worker is dead and another had to be rescued after a trench excavation in Lachine went badly on April 3.

The two workers, who were employed by Excavations S. Fournier, were putting in drains and a water line for a residential house on 54th Ave. in Lachine. As one worker,  53-year-old Gilles Levesque, was digging a trench to shut off the water to the house, the earth caved in, followed by a 500 kilogram slab of asphalt and concrete, which also caved in over the man’s head, totally submerging him.

A second worker, 43-year-old Sylvain Fournier, left his backhoe and went in to attempt to help, only to have more earth and asphalt collapse on him. Firefighters arrived quickly, and called in the High Angle Rescue Team, which specializes in high altitude and confined space rescue, to help with the rescue. They were able to remove Fournier within an hour or so, and he was taken to hospital with two fractured legs.

It took nearly four hours for firefighters to extract Levesque’s body from the collapsed trench, mostly because the hole was more than three metres deep. He was unable to survive the ordeal.

The Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail is investigating the incident.

A Maine public works snowplow driver managed to escape unharmed after the plow truck he was driving caught fire Saturday, February 25.

The operator, James Kiernan, had been plowing roads most of the previous night and was almost finished with his shift. As he was plowing and clearing slush from the road with his 2004 Sterling plow truck with a sander at about 11 a.m. Saturday, he claims he heard a hiss and a loud pop just before the truck caught fire. As soon as he realized what had happened, he jumped out and used the truck’s fire extinguisher to try to put out the fire, as other drivers on the road called for help.

By the time Farmington, Maine Fire and Rescue arrived, the truck was engulfed in flames. The road was closed to traffic for nearly an hour, as firefighters doused the fire with foam.

The cause of the fire is unknown. While the plow and the sander were largely undamaged, the cab and the engine were destroyed.  It would cost the state of Maine $90,000 to replace the vehicle with a similar 2004 plow truck, with a newer one costing nearly twice that amount.

As a works dept foreman or supervisor what would your next steps be to prove your due diligence in this matter?

California-based Bridgford Foods Corporation has been cited by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for 22 safety and health violations at its Chicago meat processing plant, and faces penalties of up to $118,700.

According to OSHA, the violations were discovered during an inspection last September 29 as part of the Severe Violator Enforcement Program, which mandates follow-up inspections of employers that endanger workers by through repeat violations.  Bridgford was placed in the program after a July 2010 inspection demonstrated that the company was exposing workers to energized equipment and failing to implement and provide training on lockout and tagout procedures.

Three repeat health violations cited by OSHA involved failure to mark chemical containers with contents and hazardous warning labels, and failure to provide an emergency eyewash station for employees working with corrosive chemicals such as sodium hypochlorite and anhydrous ammonia. Another repeat violation involved an obstructed emergency exit, after the same plant had been cited for similar violations in 2008 and 2010.

Other serious safety violations included a lack of guardrails on open pits, no hoist way enclosure on an elevator shaft, a lack of machine guarding, no handrails on staircases and a lack of emergency illumination. There were also several electrical violations, such as not enclosing live electrical equipment, missing electrical ground pins, a failure to inspect power cords on damaged equipment, and failure to cover unused circuit breakers.

The September 29 inspection of Bridgford Foods’ Chicago plant, which employs about 150 people, marked the fifth OSHA inspection since 2007. The company also operates two facilities in Dallas and one in Statesville, N.C.

A recent conference hosted by WorkSafeBC, along with several stakeholders throughout British Columbia, demonstrated the latest attempt by the agency to stay on top of safety planning for those workers who work on steep-sloped roofs.

In 2011 alone, the agency accepted 1,200 claims for construction-related injuries and fatalities that resulted from falls from heights. While roofing is seen as a high-risk occupation, WorkSafeBC officials note that there are proven ways for workers to stay safe when working at heights. The purpose of the March 28 one-day conference, entitled “Stay on Top,” was to directly help anyone working in the roofing industry to stay safe, including roofers, supervisors, contractors, estimators, consultants/inspectors, and suppliers.

The meeting covered a variety of topics such as safety responsibilities, as well as fall protection planning and procedures. The conference also featured a demonstration of a WorkSafeBC site inspection as well as an opportunity for those in attendance to get a hands-on look at the wide variety of available fall protection equipment.

Everyone who attended the conference received an information package containing a number of safety resources, including a voucher for a free RCABC fall protection course, and a discount on fall protection equipment.

As part of their Healthy U @ work initiative, the Alberta government is accepting nominations for the Premier’s Award for Healthy Workplaces. The award recognizes employers that provide strategies, initiatives, policies and/or programs that promote support and enhance a healthy workplace and the efforts of workers to remain healthy at work and beyond.

The award program is open to Alberta workplaces of all sizes that have created initiatives intended to incorporate work health and wellness into the workplace culture. Such initiatives must include (but are not limited to) both physical activity or active living and healthy eating components that are part of the Healthy U @ work program.

The award program features three categories based on the number of employees in the workplace:

• small (1-100 employees)
• medium (101-999 employees)
• large (1,000 or more employees).

The deadline for nominations is June 29, 2012, and nomination forms are available at healthyalberta.com. Award recipients will be selected in July 2012.

The Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) announced its 2011 injury statistics, and the results are a somewhat disappointing mixed bag, according to agency officials.

Last year, the province’s time loss injury rate was 3.05 percent, a decrease of 2.3 percent from 2010, which marked the ninth straight year that number has dropped. Unfortunately, while the time loss injury rate went down in 2011, the total injury rate increased from 8.70% in 2010 to 8.73% last year.

The Saskatchewan WCB finds the increase in total injury rate disappointing. They note that there were more people working in Saskatchewan in 2011, and they give credit to workers and employers across the province who are working hard to keep the numbers down, but they stress that the province has to stop accepting injuries as ‘accidents’ and an inevitable part of work.

The WCB and Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety (LRWS) created the WorkSafe Saskatchewan injury prevention partnership in 2002. Through the partnership, they have developed a broad based provincial prevention strategy, resulting in Saskatchewan’s total injury rate improving by 24%.  During the same time frame, the province’s time loss injury rate has dropped from 4.95% to the current rate, which constitutes a 38% improvement.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has announced finding nine workplace violations at a candy repackaging and distribution facility owned by The Hershey Co. and operated by Exel Inc. in Palmyra, Pennsylvania. The proposed penalties for these nine violations could cost Exel $283,000.

The six-month investigation that led to the violations was prompted by a complaint brought by the National Guestworker Alliance on behalf of a group of foreign student workers. Last August, more than 100 such workers protested working conditions at the facility, saying they took the jobs as part of what they believed would be a cultural exchange, not to find themselves working at low-paying menial jobs that left them little time or energy to do much else.

According to OSHA, six of the violations were willful, for not recording injuries and illnesses over a four-year period and not taking the required steps to protect workers’ hearing.  The citations documented cases of workers being hit by falling boxes, being cut by cardboard and suffering a variety of injuries.

The Alliance claimed the citations demonstrated that Exel did not maintain a health and safety system sufficient to allow someone to work there on a permanent, long-term basis.

OSHA also proposed a $5,000 fine against SHS Staffing Solutions, the firm that helped place the students, claiming they failed to train employees regarding safe handling of high-energy equipment.

Exel plans to fight OSHA’s findings, adding that the citations involved only the co-packing area within the Palmyra facility, and that they mostly involved record-keeping.